


Tears and Smiles From Heaven

by HannahJane



Series: The Hand of the Goddess [4]
Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Bee-Ware, Episode Tag, Fusion, Gen, Grimm (TV) - Freeform, Irish Mythology - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:06:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahJane/pseuds/HannahJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new Queen of the Portland Hive has some potentially life-altering decisions to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears and Smiles From Heaven

"Big shoes to fill, _gwenynen_." Katherine Shay whirled from the picture window, hand going to the knife hidden at her waist, drawing it with a satisfying hiss of steel against leather. That was as far as she got in the act of defending herself. A bruising grip seized her around the throat while another wrenched the knife from her fingers and she found herself dangling off the ground, held aloft by one ivory hand. Katherine's heeled feet kicked helplessly in the air as she choked, clawing at the fingers around her throat.

  


"Not a good way to begin our encounter…" the slender dark-haired girl trailed off, casually holding Katherine up even as she inspected the knife that she'd confiscated. "Is it your majesty yet? Or are you still a drone until a coronation is held?" Katherine tried to gurgle a response, one that heavily featured profanity-laced threats. The girl smiled, a humorless expression that didn't reach her eyes and with no apparent strain, gave Katherine a shake that whiplashed her head on her shoulders.

  


"That isn't queenly behavior." The girl said, green eyes gleaming. Head still reeling, Katherine thrashed in the steel grip, trying to kick out at her captor even as blackness edged in on her field of vision. There was a faint snort and then without warning, the floor was rising up to meet her, her body skidding over the thick carpet and sliding until she came to an abrupt stop against the far wall. Coughing against the pain that blossomed in her chest, Katherine scrambled to her feet, holding onto the wall as she faced off against her assailant. She kicked off her shoes as an after-thought because unlike Melissa, she had yet to perfect the art of fighting in heels.

  


Confusion furrowed Katherine's eyebrows. An assassination attempt already? She hadn't even taken the throne yet, the Hive hadn't acknowledged her as their queen. The girl wasn't _wesen,_ the scent was wrong for a creature, but she wasn't human either. Katherine would have been able to taste it on the back of her tongue, bitter and familiar. No, this girl was… Katherine's tongue flicked out just the slightest, catching the scent in the air. The girl tasted like copper pennies and something else, dark chocolate maybe. Something, a layer of magic maybe, hung around her like a cape, fuzzing her silhouette around the edges. The girl's beauty was just this side of unnatural, sensual even just wearing jeans and a black Henley, a necklace featuring a bird charm strung around her slim neck. An old memory teased the back of Katherine's mind, an old bedtime story trying to push to the forefront of her mind, but unable to break through. Something was wrong, something was… missing.

  


Suddenly, in the back of her mind, Katherine was very much aware of the deathly silence. The familiar hum of her brothers and sisters was missing, gone, solitude looming painfully close. Here in Melissa's old mansion, surrounded by hundreds of her fellow _melliflers_ , Katherine was alone. The girl had cut her off from the rest of the Hive, isolated her mind here in this room. Panic vibrated through Katherine's body and she felt her features shift with the strength of the emotion. Her mandibles clacked nervously as she faced the girl who stood still in before the picture window, graceful and lethal.

  


"Give some thought to your next move. You won't win a fight against me." The girl said, pointing the knife in Katherine's direction as if emphasizing her threat. Katherine's eyes tracked the blade and as if enjoying a captive audience, the girl twirled the knife around until she felt it backhanded, the blade lying along her forearm. It was as much a physical threat as a visual one. Katherine had learned long ago that the way a person held a weapon spoke volumes about how well they could use it. The girl before her was no amateur when it came to combat. Katherine glanced past the girl, at the closed bedroom door and tried to estimate how difficult it would be to get past her, out into the hall, and call for help. She might not have been able to summon the drones with her mind, but there was no way they wouldn't have been able to hear an audible cry.

  


"You can try, but you won't make it very far and I will be forced to cut off one of those charming little antennae. You won't be a very pretty queen after that, _gwenynen._ " The girl said, still stock still, knife poised for what would surely be a lightning fast and lethal strike. The fact that she wasn't attacking was both frustrating and confusing. In fact Katherine was so distracted by it that she almost missed the part where the girl had just read her mind. But then her brain caught up with the conversation and Katherine froze.

  


"How-?" Katherine asked, sure she looked ridiculous with her mouth flopping open. The girl shrugged and just like that the blade of the knife swung down, the tip pointed at the floor. It was such a sudden movement that Katherine flinched, expecting the movement to be an attack.

  


"How do I know you are a _mellifler_? Or that you are next in line to control the Hive? Or… that you find me attractive?" the girl said this last one with her head cocked to the side, dark curls sliding across her shoulder. Katherine felt her face flush, internally cursing her thought process. The girl's smirk never shifted. If anything, she simply looked smugger.

  


"What are you?" Katherine asked, straightening as much as possible with her ribs throbbing like a bass line. The girl took a step forward, fluid and vaguely predatory, knife beginning to swing a little in her fingers. Katherine kept her gaze on the glint of the blade.

  


" _Who_ I am is unimportant." The girl said, beginning to tap the knife against her thigh in a specific rhythm. "At the moment, you and I need to discuss the Grimm." A combination of fear and anger rushed through Katherine, making her shiver again. She ignored her ribs, taking two strides forward, hands fisting at her sides.

  


"He is a traitor." Katherine snapped, giving into the anger. "Our Queen is dead because of him. He sided with the _hexenbeist_. He is our enemy." The words had barely left her mouth when the girl moved, too swiftly to follow. One moment, she was in the middle of the room, the next Katherine found herself pressed against the wall, the tip of her own weapon pressing firmly against her carotid.

  


"Call him a traitor again, _gwenynen_ and two Queens will be dead." The girl whispered in her ear, her voice lilting. "There are more powerful beings in the universe than you realize, Katherine Shay and you have come very close to angering one of them today." Reality dictated that Katherine should have been able to fight off the girl. She had a size advantage and twenty years of martial arts training, but she knew instinctively – the way prey knows its only recourse is to flee the predator –she wouldn't be able to even if she tried.

  


"I… I apologize." Katherine grated out, trying not to think about the knife pressed unrelentingly against her throat or the girl's body against hers. That was another mess entirely. As if she'd once again read Katherine's thoughts, one of the girl's dark eyebrows rose and she moved closer, pressing forward with her hips. The _mellifler_ suspect she was being toyed with, a suspicion that was amplified when the girl retracted the knife, but didn't step back.

  


"That's not fair." Katherine protested, the words slipping out before she could catch them, the vowels traced with irritation. The girl smiled, a flash of white teeth and then pulled back, putting a few inches of space between them. Katherine didn't try and move… just in case.

  


"What is fair or not fair tends to depend upon how vindictive one is feeling." The girl said, looking down at the knife in her hand, tapping the blade against her palm, lapsing into silence. In fact, the silence lasted so long that Katherine was considering trying to break past her to the door when the girl cocked her head to the side and then stepped close again. Katherine held her breath as the girl's slim hands slid across the front of her hips and around her waist, one holding the knife until the tip of the weapon met the scabbard at the small of her back. With a slowness that was blood-boiling deliberate, the not- _wesen_ girl slid the knife home and then stepped back a good distance before she turned her back on Katherine, going to the picture window in the empty bedroom. To anyone else, it would have seemed like a mistake, a tactical error but Katherine recognized that she had been crossed off a threat list of some kind, reduced to a bug on the proverbial windshield that was this girl's ego.

  


"The Grimm." The girl said, glancing over her shoulder and there was something in her expression that made Katherine press back against the wall. "He is not to be harmed by any in your Hive. No vengeance claims or blood oaths of revenge. They will not be tolerated."

  


"I am Queen of this Hive." Katherine said using the present tense even though technically… Her fear was forgotten at the challenge, pushing off the wall, determined to wrest back at least some control of the situation. "I will make decisions regarding the welfare of my people."

  


"A queen ponders all points of view before she makes a decision, majesty." The girl spoke softly, hands settling on her hips. She looked young, so young until one got to those eyes and knew that this was not a young woman, that those glowing green orbs held history and death. Katherine folded her arms over her chest and met the girl's gaze dead on, calling all her courage forward.

  


"And I have made mine. The Grimm is enemy. He sided with a _hexenbeist_. The notification has already been made." A corner of the girl's mouth twitched as if she was thinking about smiling.

  


"Ah, yes. Stinging him on the hand." Sarcasm tinted the girl's words, the shape of them changing the set of the girl's mouth into a half-scowl. "How positively medieval of you."

  


"The Grimm and _melliflers_ have always had a beneficial relationship. We compliment each other. This new Grimm destroyed that relationship the moment that he killed the last Queen." Katherine tilted her chin up, half challenging. The girl leaned back, resting against the picture window, crossing her legs at the knee, hands disappearing into her pockets. The casual pose was fooling no one.

  


"Unlike past Grimms, Nicholas Burkhardt is not merely a hunter of the _wesen_. This one has a conscience. Personally, I find his use of his abilities refreshing. He does not seek to destroy, he wishes to arbitrate, to protect." One dark eyebrow rose ever so slightly. "And in a protectorate ruled over by a _tywysog_ with shall we say a _loose_ moral code, I would think that the new Grimm's approach would be welcome." Katherine relaxed ever so slightly. This, this she knew how to do. Politics, words, double-talk, and hidden meanings.

  


"The title of Grimm does not exactly have positive connotations associated with it and certainly not when it comes to Burkhardt's bloodline. Marie Kessler was a prime example of that. The woman was a butcher and a cold-blooded killer." As Katherine spoke, the girl's dark eyebrow dropped, suddenly meshing with its neighbor into a dark line above her green eyes. "Why would her nephew be any different? My decision is final. The new Grimm is our enemy." The girl straightened, using her shoulders to push off the window. Somehow, Katherine knew that she had put her foot in her mouth. She took a step backwards, tensing her muscles to pivot and make a run for the door. She didn't even get a chance to turn.

  


"I can separate your pretty little head from your shoulders before you can blink." The girl whispered in her ear, suddenly behind her, clutching her neck again, nails digging into the skin just beneath her jaw. "I will not tell you again, _gwenynen_. Do not test my patience. Not today." Katherine remained silent, aware of the tenuous relationship between the pulsing veins in her neck and the girl's claw-like nails.

  


"If the Grimm is your enemy, majesty, then _I_ am your enemy and of the two of us, I am the one that you should truly fear." Katherine stumbled as the girl's grasp vanished again, her knees wobbling as she regained her balance. The girl was now on the other side of the room by the door, still breathtakingly beautiful, but there was warning in her eyes.

  


"Think very carefully before you make your decision, _gwenynen_ ," a flash of teeth in the guise of a smile. "It will decide the length of your life as well as your reign." And like that, she was gone, simply disappeared as if she had never been there in the first place.

  


The buzz of the Hive filled her mind once more, warm and inviting, but Katherine stood in the empty bedroom and wrapped her arms around herself, impossibly cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Gwenynen- Irish word for bee.
> 
>  
> 
> The title of the story is from a Tennyson poem "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere".


End file.
